American Film As American Culture

Beyond Visual Aids: American Film as American Culture Author(s): Vivian C. Sobchack Source: American Quarterly, Vol.
32, No. 3 (1980), pp. 280-300 Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2712451 . Accessed: 28/08/2013 10:40
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BEYOND VISUAL AIDS: AMERICAN FILM AS AMERICAN CULTURE

VIVIAN C. SOBCHACK Southern IllinoisUniversity at Carbondale
and Studies is rather likestanding before theconfluence oftheMississippi withthenecessity of stepping Ohio Rivers.The observer is confronted is as integral wetat all. FilmStudies intotworivers at onceornotgetting ofFilmStudies; a partofAmerican Studies as American Studies is a part are so commingled meeting pointthatthe at their the separate currents A lookthrough theconvenwaters can no longer be clearly distinguished. StudiesAssociation and theSocietyfor tionprograms of theAmerican in CinemaStudiesrevealshow frequently converge thetwo disciplines Studies and Film andmethods.1 American their subject matter, interests, Studiesare differentiated by theirrespective goals and emphases;the is American former wouldpotentially all that theartand study (including all thatis film), whilethelatter wouldstudy artifact whichis American inthecase ofAmerican cultural, cinematic film, theaesthetic, (including, andhistorical thesimilarities experience). However, context ofAmerican Bothare unruly, their that thedisciplines sharefaroutweigh differences. of problems Bothare synthetic, and, as such,face similar broad,fluid. oftheir interdistheory, andthedemands legitimacy, scope,philosophy, As well,bothhavealwaysbeenhighly dependent upon nature. ciplinary
EXPLORING
THE
CONNECTIONS
BETWEEN
AMERICAN
STUDIES
AND
FILM
1 The Society forCinema Studies is the nationalorganization forscholars and teachersin Film Studies and the publisherof Cinema Journal. Membershipinformation may be obtainedfromthe Society's Secretary,Daniel J. Leab, at 121 E. 78thStreet,New York, New York 10021.
Film as American Culture
281
key works like JenniCalder's There Must Be a Lone Ranger and John American myths. Frank McConnell's The Spoken Seen: Film and the
pagesare regularly shared by scholars with diverse academicorigins and intellectual horizons.2 Therehas also been an increasing number of impressive booksaboutfilm bythosewhoseinitial allegiance layoutside the cinema.The disciplines of literature and popularculture have givenus
and history. Literature/Film Quarterly, The Journalof Popular Film and Television, and Film and History are all relativelynew journals whose
otherdisciplines fortheir methods and modelsof inquiry, such as the paradigms and modelscurrently provided by semiotics, structuralism, psychoanalytic theory, phenomenology, and hermeneutics. Thus,when thebest scholars in thetwo disciplines focuson American film as their subject, itis often impossible (andhappily unnecessary) totellthem apart. Within their work,thedisciplines merge.American film and American culture are considered mutually interdependent, each illuminating and providing a context forthe other. Duringthe last decade therehas been increasing evidenceof concerned,cogent,and cinematically literate filmto scholarship relating American inliterature, Studies popular culture, sociology, anthropology,
Cawelti'sTheSix-Gun Mystique, bothofwhich deal with theWestern in itsliterary and cinematic forms as ritual artanimating themostenduring
Romantic links Imagination film to itsnineteenth-century ancesliterary and MichaelWood'sAmerica andsubjectry, intheMoviesis a sensitive tivepsycho-social films from exploration ofAmerican 1930-1963.3 has givenus Ian Jarvie's Sociology an investigaMoviesand Society, tionof the cinemaas a social phenomenon, as one institution among Garth many. Jowett's Film:TheDemocratic Artis a sociologists history of a mass medium in a mass society, and Will Wright's Six Guns and Societyis one of thefirst structural approaches to a film genreand its
2 LiteraturelFilmQuarterlycan be obtained from Salisbury State College, Salisbury, Maryland 21801; The Journal of Popular Film and Television fromthe Popular Culture Center,BowlingGreen State University, BowlingGreen, Ohio 43403; and Film and History from The HistoriansFilm Commitee,c/o HistoryFaculty,New JerseyInstitute of Technology, Newark, New Jersey07101. Particularattention is also directedto the special "Film and AmericanStudies" issue of American Quarterly, 31 (Winter1979), edited by Peter C. Rollins, which featuresa range of articlesdemonstrating the approaches suggestedin this essay. 3 JenniCalder, There Must Be a Lone Ranger (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1974); John Cawelti,The Six-GunMystique(BowlingGreen, Ohio: Popular Press, 1971); Frank McConnell, The Spoken Seen: Film and the Romantic Imagination (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 1975); Michael Wood, America in theMovies; or "Santa Maria, It had Slipped My Mind" (New York: Basic Books, 1975).
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ship of works like Thomas Cripps' Slow Fade to Black: The Negro in AmericanFilms, 1900-1942 and its companionBlack Film as Genre; and
society.4 American incontemporary changes parallel which forms variant Oh, Whata Blow This has shapedEdmundCarpenter's Anthropology specuwhich diary and provocative Gave Me, an introspective Phantom and imageand itsmagical photographic ofthemoving lateson thenature man.Anthropology and civilized forprimitive implications philosophical to ofa newapproach tothedevelopment significantly has also contributed studiesin Sol Worthand JohnAdair's both filmand ethnographic howpeople to discover theattempt records Through Navajo Eyes,which so of cinematography themthe rudiments by teaching reality structure thattheymay serveas theirown ethnographers.5 and wideits rigor has lentfilm of history thediscipline And,finally, scholarin themeticulous haveresulted bothofwhich curiosity, ranging genre film ignored ofa previously redemption LawrenceSuid's historical
of relations revealsthe history workcarefully packed title,thislatter since1925as demonandtheDepartment ofDefense between Hollywood JohnE. films. feature of over thirty history in the production strated crucialcollection of essays,AmeriA. Jackson's O'Connor,and Martin Andspecialmention confrontation. intoilluminating films and historians Movie-Made must be made of Robert Sklar's pioneeringhistory, filmis seen as the feature its pages, the Hollywood America.Within nexus of ideological,economic,cultural,and social forces shaping century.6 halfof the twentieth audiencesin the first American
I Ian Jarvie, Movies and Society (New York: Basic Books, 1970); GarthJowett, Film: The Democratic Art (Boston: Little,Brown, 1976); Will Wright, Six Guns and Society: A Structural Study of the Western(Berkeley: Univ. of CaliforniaPress, 1975). The termgenre as used here and as commonlyapplied to filmdescribes the classification of filmson the basis of similarcontentas well as on similarities of formalstructure. Westernsand musicals are genres, whereas narrative,animated, or documentaryfilmare seldom spoken of in this fashion. See, for example, Barry K. Grant, ed., Film Genre: Theory and Criticism (Metuchen, N.J.: Scarecrow Press, 1977); Stuart M. Kaminsky American Film Genres: Approaches to a CriticalTheory of Popular Film (Dayton, Ohio: Pflaum,1974); and Stanley J. Solomon, Beyond Formula: AmericanFilm Genres (New York: Harcourt, 1976). 5 Edmund Carpenter, Oh, What a Blow This Phantom Gave Me (New York: Holt, and Winston,1973); Sol Worthand JohnAdair,Through Rinehart Navajo Eyes: An Exploration in Film Communicationand Anthropology (Bloomington:Indiana Univ Press, 1972). 6 Thomas Cripps, Slow Fade to Black: The Negro in American Films, 1900-1942 (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1977) and Black Film as Genre (Bloomington:Indiana Univ. Press, 1978); Lawrence Suid, Guts and Glory: Great American War Movies (Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley,1978); JohnE. O'Connor and MartinA. Jackson,eds., American the Hollywood Image (New York: Ungar, 1979); HistorylAmericanFilm: Interpreting Robert Sklar, Movie-Made America: A CulturalHistoryof American Movies (New York: Random House, 1975).
in Guts and Glory: Great American War Movies. Despite its action-
the Hollywood Image, brings Film: Interpreting can History/American
283
These important contributions to both AmericanStudies and Film Studiesweremadeby scholars who recognize thatthemedium and the culture are inextricably and significantly boundtogether. But farmore frequently film is regarded as little more than a visualaid, as an interestingor entertaining garnish to themoresubstantial and traditional fareof research ahd pedagogy. Filmoften suffers from theprejudices of those who believe. in the primacy of the written word and from the casual attitude of those who treatit too familiarly. Indeed, outsideof Film Studies, serious considerationof Americanfilmas Americanart, criticism, history, ideology, andculture is inhibited bycommon attitudes whichpromote cinematic illiteracy. In literature, film is regarded as irrelevant ortreated as a medium which scavenges primary works to create imitations or alterations ofthem. Thus,thevalueofAmerican cinemato the history and lifeof American arts and letters is seen as primarily illustrative. In history, film is also regarded as besidethepoint-of dubious use as either a primary document or an interpretation of American history andculture, or ofpossible valuesolelyas an entertaining footnote tothemain business oftraditional scholarship. Whether madeas fiction or document, films maybe treated as artifacts butthey are bythehistorian, rarely treated as history, as interpreting history, as making history. Most important, scholarswho use filmin researchand teaching American Studies generally focuson content and ignore theforce lanofcinematic guageand form. Moviesare seen as revealing no morethanthey overtly say through the simplest aspectsof theirnarrative their development, dialogueor narration, or their mimetic photographic surfaces. Thus,as literature, as history, as significant culture,as rhetorical discourse, American filmshave forthe mostpartbeen abused or neglected by American Studies.They have been considered of the same unworthy meticulous description anddetailed or historical afforded analysis poetry documents. They have not enjoyedthe statusawardedthosearts,arand documents tifacts, mosteasily"read" and illuminated by scholars trained inthecomplexities intheequivaofverbal butuntutored language lent complexities ofcinematic language. If,for the example, onecontrasts common use of filmin bothresearch and teaching withthe synthetic inJohn Katz's Perspectives approaches suggested Stuart on theStudy of Film, it becomes obvious thatthe medium'srelevanceto American Studies as boththetextand thecontext culture and history ofAmerican has hardly been recognized, let alonerealized.7
I JohnStuartKatz, Perspectiveson the Study ofFilm (Boston: Little,Brown, 1971). This is a collectionof essays whichfocuses on filmstudyand education,on film as an artand one of the humanities,and on filmas communication,environment, and politics.
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American Quarterly FILM LANGUAGE AND FILM THEORY
My intention has notbeen to suggestthatthissuperficial regardforfilm is purely willful.Citizen Kane notwithstanding, American films have rarelyannouncedtheirown complexity.8 Untilrecently, mosthave had a tendency to hide theirown devices. Indeed, Americanfilms have been the most technicallyand structurally seamless of national cinemas. Except for the maverickcinema of the American underground, which has devoted itselfto testingthe boundaries of formas well as content,9 most American movies have avoided the reflexiveness and distancing techniques so oftenfoundin European cinema. Instead theyhave opted foran illusionismwhich has been so successful thattechnique and form seem eitherinvisibleor simpleand undemanding of the viewer. The need to "read" or "decode" mostAmericanfilmsoftenappears pretentious, if not unnecessary. Learning cinematic language and film theoryhardly seems crucial to a discussion of Busby Berkeleymusicals as one formof cultural amusement in Depression America.10The creaky romances, back-stage plots, lavish spectacle, and strange,surrealvision of bodies in space are obvious in theirrejectionof the social reality choreographed outside the movie theater. Or so it firstappears. A formalanalysis of Berkeley's rhetoricaluse of the movingcamera (its acts of penetration and voyeurism)and his literalization of sexual metaphorscan illuminate the dance director's visual exploitationof women, an exploitationnot level." As well, someone attunedto the always apparenton the narrative visual and formalelementsof Berkeleytextsmight findthe filmideologically complex. For example, the uses of space and performers in the
8 Citizen Kane (Orson Welles, RKO, 1941). Since filmsare primary texts, they will be cited as such: notationprovidesthe director, studio,and year of release. For rentalinformation, the reader is directedto James Limbacher, ed., Feature Films on 8mm, 16mm,and Videotape, Sixth Edition (New York: R.R. Bowker, 1979). 9 The American avant-gardefilmmovementafterWorld War II was influencedby the artisticupheavals in Europe duringthe first-decadesof the century. See, for example, StandishD. Lawder, The CubistCinema (New York: New York Univ. Press, 1975); and Art in Cinema: A Symposiumof the Avant-GardeFilm, ed. by Frank-Stafiffacher (1947; rpt. New York: Arno Press, 1968). For a specifically Americanfocus; see Sheld6n Renan, An Introduction to theAmerican Underground Film (New York: EP. Dutton, 1967); P. Adams Sitney,Visionary Film: The AmericanAvant-Garde1943-1978,2nd ed. (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1974); and the periodicalsFilm Cultureand Millennium.Amos Vogel's Film as a Subversive Art (New York: Random House, 1974) is also highlyrecommendedfor its provocativesummariesofjust how "alternative" cinema formand contentmay become. 10See Andrew Bergman,We're in the Money: Depression America and Its Films (New York: Harper and Row, 1971). For a volumewhichpictorially conveys the lavish surrealism of Berkeley's work, see Tony Thomas and JimTerry,with Busby Berkeley, The Busby BerkeleyBook (New York: New York Graphic Society, 1973). 11Lucy Fischer, "The Image of Woman as Image: The Optical Politics of Dames," Film Quarterly,30 (Fall 1976), 2-10.
285
dance numbersstressand value symmetry, mechanicalmovement, quantity,conformity, and uniformity. One might advance the hypothesisthat Berkeleyfilmsvisualize a totalitarian aestheticresponsiveto the popular fororderand leadershipin the chaotic and uncertain yearning worldoutside the theater.12 Althoughsuch an interpretation mightbe difficult to "prove" (involving formal and contentanalyses ofthefilms and historical and sociological research),the hypothesis would probablynot have been articulatedto initiatesuch an inquirywere the scholar unaware of film language.13 Far too often,such light, fantastic, and superficially transparent American filmshave been dismissed or given only cursoryattention in American Studies. And more mimeticfilmshave hardlyfaredbetter;although theirsurfaces have been taken seriouslyas a mirror of the world, their illusionof realismhas been so successfulthattheyseem opaque, offering up only content,theirformand technique hidden by theirphotographic persuasiveness. In Semiotics of Cinema, perhaps the most valuable and clear overview of filmlanguage available, JurijLotman identifiesthe problem which analysis of the cinematic image always entails: is as resembles theworld which we see.... Butthis Cinematography similarity unreliable whichsoundlikewordsof our as thewordsof a foreign language own. That whichis different of comto be identical. The illusion pretends prehension is created where no genuine comprehension exists.Onlybyunderthecinema canwe be convinced but that itis nota slavish standing copyoflife, an activerecreation an inwhich into similarities anddifferences areassembled life.'4 integral, tension-filled-sometimes dramatic-process of perceiving The ways in which filmsuse the rectangularspaces of the frame,construct and deconstruct and editing, timethrough movement express meaning and attitudethroughlighting,color, composition, shiftsof angle, sound of all kinds, and the complementarity of all these or counterpoint elements presentedto the viewer make the need for cinematicliteracy obvious. Films,after textsand itis theability to read them all, are primary whichis crucial (despite the bibliographic emphasisof thepresentessay).
12 It would be fascinating to screen a Berkeley musical like Dames (Berkeley, Warners, 1934) with Leni Riefenstahl'sTriumphof the Will (Riefenstahl,1936), the German film recording and apotheosizingthe symmetry and styleof Nazi spectacle at the 1934 Nuremberg Rally. 13 I am using the term "film language" extremely loosely. The question whetherfilm actuallyhas or is a language is in constantdebate among filmscholars. Here it is meantto refer to the formalelementsand devices of filmwhichare used in and across givenworks. 14 Jurij Lotman,Semioticsof Cinema, trans.by Mark E. Suino, MichiganSlavic Contributions (Ann Arbor: Univ. of Michigan Press, 1976), 4.
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As Lotman emphasizes: "Cinematic meaning is meaning expressed by the resources of cinematic language, and it is impossible outside that
presentsthe and critically chronologically Film Theories:An Introduction
An IntroRead a Film,andThomasSobchackandVivianC. Sobchack's within whichto context an historical duction to Film.17And to provide one shouldalso becomeawareof language, offilm a knowledge ground TheMajor J. DudleyAndrew's offilm theory. theprocessand progress their respecisolating usefully thinkers, influential ideasofcinema'smost in addressed questions tiveviewsofthoseontological andepistemological Two anthologies intheprimary works themselves.18 a less orderly fashion to fine,each serving are particularly of selectedtheory and criticism Cohen'sFilm Theory theother.GeraldMast and Marshall complement
Critical Focus: An Introductionto Film, David Bordwell and Kristin Allan Casebier's Film AppreciaThompson's Film Art:An Introduction, Movies, JamesMonaco's How to tion,Louis D. Gianetti'sUnderstanding
language. 15 Studiesscholaris to achieveat least taskfortheAmerican The first and to achieveit quickly. language, with film somedegreeoffamiliarity Lotman'sSemiotics by first reading perhaps, Thisis bestaccomplished, a brief, proand provides language of Cinema,whichavoids technical orcenterof complexly as a "concentrated of film vocativeoverview understanding yetnontechnical Next,a specific ganizedinformation."'6 canbe obtained infilms arecombined andhowthey ofcinematic elements works on film availableintroductory at leastone ofthemany by reading tendto be as texts,theseintroductions intended Generally aesthetics. in be found thanmight in approach and less idiosyncratic moreholistic M. Blumenberg's are Richard recommended tradeaesthetics; analogous
Readings provides many selections from and Criticism: Introductory
Ibid., 42. Ibid., 94. 17 Ca.: Critical Focus: An Introductionto Film (Belmont, RichardM. Blumenberg, Film Art An Introduction and Kristin Thompson, 1975); David Bordwell Wadsworth, FilmAppreciation (New York: 1979);AllanCasebier, Mass.: Addison-Wesley, (Reading, N.J.: Movies (EnglewoodCliffs, Understanding Harcourt,1976); Louis D. Gianetti,
15 16
1980). to Film(Boston:Little, AnIntroduction C. Sobchack, andVivian Sobchack Brown, media intoother How toRead a Filmextends material, coversimilar thesetexts Although to Focus andAn Introduction bothCritical technology, with and deals morethanothers film, and experimental ofdocumentary Filmspendsomesizeablespace on theaesthetics of and structure to Film is the onlytextto explorethe aesthetics and An Introduction genrefilms. American 18 J. DudleyAndrew, The Major Film Theories: An Introduction(New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1976).
Language, Prentice-Hall, 1976); JamesMonaco, How to Read a Film: The Art,Technology, Historyand Theoryof Film and Media (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1977); Thomas
287
those traditional andcontemporary theorists introduced byAndrew as the cinema'skey thinkers, whileBill Nichols'Movies and Methodsoffers material which reflects themostrecent in ideological andformal thought 19 film theory andcriticism. A basicknowledge offilm language andtheory willenablethe American Studiesscholarto consider film American in new relations to thosemorefamiliar, if alwaysawkward, divisions of American culture: artsand letters, and social and political history. FILM AND ARTS AND LETTERS Most filmscholarship in American Studieshas concentrated on the medium's ofliterary litersources.Iffilm has beenconsidered adaptation ature, it has been mostoften a secondary acderivative literature-one cordedneither independent status as literature (whether as adaptation or criticism "original"work)noras literary (as an interpretive of reading literature). Untilrecently, common practice amongliterary scholars has been to illustrate American fiction withfilm adaptations. Complexand provocative workslike von Stroheim's Greed (adapted fromNorris'
A Place intheSun (both adapted from theDreiser novel), andGeorge Roy Hill'sSlaughterhouse-Five (adapted from Vonnegut's novel)arecertainly citedandoften praised. Mostoftheliterary is scholar's energy, however, spentchastising easy targets. American film is accused of diluting and vulgarizing American fiction by substituting the metaphoric withthe ridiculously concrete (e.g., thewhite whaleinHuston'sMobyDick),and compressing theleisurely and contemplative intoa offerings ofliterature twohourswhichstress quickand energetic actionat theexpenseofthe source'stheme andstructure (e.g.,adaptions ofSister Carrie, Elmer Gantry,The Sound and theFury, and Deliverance). The nuance and subtlety foundin the filmversionsofDodsworthor Miss Lonelyheartsare forgottenfor theobviousandempty adaptations ofTheGreatGatsby.20 Forthe
McTeague), von Sternberg's An AmericanTragedyand George Steven's
most film offiction have part(andnotalwaysundeservedly), adaptations enjoyedthe same statusas Classic Comics.
19Gerald Mast and Marshall Cohen, Film Theoryand Criticism:Introductory Readings,
2nded. (New York:Oxford Univ.Press,1979);Bill Nichols, Moviesand Methods (Berkeley:Univ. of California Press, 1977). 20 Greed AnAmerica vonSternberg, (Erichvon Stroheim, MGM, 1924); Tragedy (Josef Paramount,1931) and A Place in the Sun (George Stevens, Paramount,1951); Slaughterhouse-Five (George RoyHill,Universal, 1972); Moby Dick (John United Huston, Artists, 1956);Carrie(William Wyler, Paramount, 1952);ElmerGantry (Richard Brooks, United Artists, 1960);TheSoundand theFury(Martin Ritt, Fox, 1959); Deliverance (John Boorman, Warners, 1972); Dodsworth (William Wyler, Goldwyn, 1936); MissLonelyhearts (Vincent J.Donehue, United TheGreat Artists, 1959); Gatsby (Herbert Brenon, Paramount, 1926;Elliott Nugent, Paramount, 1949;andJackClayton, Paramount, 1974).
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Adaptationsof drama have fareda bit better-perhaps because there are fewer of them, perhaps because they preserve the sanctityof the verbal text which is theirsource, perhaps because they have a parallel mode of performancewithina determinatetime frame. However, althoughmore respectable and less criticized,the dramaticadaptation is also seen as primarily illustrative, as a substitute forthe live performance of a drama which is somehow unaffected by the new form through which it is presented.The similarities thatfilmand drama share have led to a criticalneglectoftheirmostinteresting differences. has rarely Lastly,film been consideredin its relationship to poetry, perhapsbecause films rarely "adapt" poems (Charge of the Light Brigade notwithstanding), but most likely because of the general lack of cinematic knowledge which would enable the literary scholar to identifythe similar syntactical and ways of creatingmetaphorwhich link strategies,uses of rhythm, cinema in its various forms to poetry.One workwhichdoes considerfilm in relationto both poetryand drama (as well as to the novel) is Robert Richardson's Literatureand Film.22 To date, the most diverse and imaginative approaches to the intersection of filmand literature appear in JohnHarrington'sexcellent anthology,Film And/AsLiterature.23 itclearlypositionsfilm narrative Although in relationto a literary model, it is the only available anthology which is theoretical in emphasis and extremely broad in scope. It not only examines filmin respect to, and as, particularliterary genres, but also explores key aestheticand criticalissues undersuch chapterheadingsas "Authorshipand Auteurship,"24 "Message, Medium,and LiteraryArt," and "Film's Literary Resources." There are, of course, other useful workswhichtreatfilmand its relationship eitherto a singleliterary genre (most usually the novel), or to the work of a particularliteraryfigure which has been adapted or influencedby the cinema. The most widelyknown of these is George Bluestone's Novels Into Film: The Metamorphosis of Fiction Into Cinema.25 Finallyavailable in English,Claude Edmonde Magny's The Age of the American Novel: The Film Aestheticof Fiction Between the Two Wars provides a different approach to the rela21 22 23 24
Robert Richardson, Literature and Film (Bloomington: IndianaUniv. Press, 1969). John Harrington, Film (Englewood andlasLiterature Cliffs, N.J.:Prentice Hall, 1977). Theterm auteur designates thedirector (or screenwriter, performer, cinematographer, a film editor) whoinforms with personal vision tothedegree that thework, however initially derivative or collaborative, becomesimprinted witha recognizable personal style. 25 George Bluestone, Univ.ofCalifornia NovelsIntoFilm(Berkeley: Press,1968). Ofthe six films treated at length, onlytwo are adaptations of American fiction (The Grapesof Wrath and TheOx-Bow Incident); however, theopening discussion of adaptation and the and similarities differences the mediais extremely between worthwhile.
Charge of the Light Brigade (TonyRichardson, UnitedArtists, 1968).
2'89
tionshipbetween the novel and cinema; her work explores the aesthetic interchange between filmtechnique and prose styleas it emerges in the fiction of Dos Passos, Hemingway,Steinbeck,and Faulkner.26 And, most recently, Faulknerhas been the subject of both Bruce F. Kawin's Faulkner and Film and Regina K. Fadiman's narrowerstudy,Faulkner's Intruderin the Dust: Novel Into Film.27 It is in Literature/Film Quarterly,however, thatthe interested reader willfindthe mostpracticaland varied discussionsof individual worksand authors,as well as actual criticalpractices-devoted to more general and theoretical concerns. Outside thejournal's pages, perhaps the most convenientcollectionsof materialdevoted to analyses of the Americannovel as it has been transformed intoAmericanfilmappear in Gerald Peary and Roger Shatzkin's The Classic American Novel and the Movies and its latercompanionvolume,The ModernAmerican Novel and the Movies.28 These anthologiesare particularly interesting not onlybecause theyfocus solely on Americanliterature (the firstranges fromCooper to Faulkner and the second fromCaldwell to Updike), but also because manyof the essays acknowledgetheadaptiveprocess as morethanthe complextransformation of one mediuminto another.In many selections,filmadaptacriticalintions are seen as autonomousaestheticworks, as penetrating and as ideological structures.Wideningthe of literature, terpretations and signification oftheadaptiveprocess, theeditorspointout significance thefollowing in the second volume (whichhas a chapteron "The Politics of Adaptation"): The act of demonstrating howa novelbecomesa film is morethanacademic In studying the exercise andformalist It is a toolfor curiosity. political analysis. we canbegin madealong film mazeofartistic decisions thewaytothefinal text, to accountfortheplannedideological choices within the normally opaque Hollywood cinema.29 Despite the emphasis on adaptation apparentin the abundance of refilmalso bornefromthe union of filmand literature, search and criticism In its own language (aural and visual), Americanfilm existsas literature.
26
Faulkner's Intruderin the Dust: Novel Into Film (Knoxville: Univ. of Tennessee Press, York: Ungar, 1977); The ModernAmericanNovel and theMovies (New York: Ungar,1978). 29 The Modern AmericanNovel, 2. Pearyand Shatzkin,
theTwo Wars,trans. (New York:Ungar,1972).The by EleanorHochman tionBetween published in Francein 1948. bookwas originally 27 BruceF. Kawin, K. Fadiman, Faulkner and Film(New York:Ungar,1977);Regina volumealso includes the screenplay. 1978).The latter 28 Gerald The Classic American Novel and the Movies (New PearyandRogerShatzkin,
Claude-Edmonde Magny, The Age of the AmericanNovel: The Film Aestheticof Fic-
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treatstheverysame themesand motifs foundin moretraditionally literary genres. Indeed, Americanfilmas the popular literature of a nation and cultureis equal to any formof written literature in its abilityto animate Americanmythology or to express overtly or symbolically thepreoccupations of Americanexperience. Consider, forexample, the cinema's conto the mythof the West. The work of John Ford (directorof tribution Stagecoach, She Worea YellowRibbon, and The Searchers),30Sam Peckinpah(directorof Ride the High Country, Ballad of Cable Hogue, and The WildBunch),3' or, forthatmatter, JohnWayne (the iconic Westerner fromhis kineticyouthin "B" movies to his cancer-ridden old age in The Shootist)32is as important to Western mythology as the work of Ned Buntline, Owen Wister, or A.B. Guthrie. Robert Altman (who made McCabe and Mrs. Millerand BuffaloBill and theIndians, or Sitting Bull's HistoryLesson) is as conscious and precise a criticof the Westernromance and its morality of styleas are RobertWarshow,AndreBazin, and Richard Slotkin.33 There are a variety of ways in which the Western addresses the myths whichit has helped to perpetuateand alter. In additionto previously-cited thereare such diverse studiesas Diana literature, Serra Cary's The HollywoodPosse, whichrecordsthearrivalofdisplaced to cowboys in Hollywood around 1912and theirsubsequentcontributions the Hollywood range as actors and stuntmen; Philip French's Westerns, which interprets the films of the '50s and '60s from a socio-political perspective; and Jon Tuska's The Filmingof the West, which provoca30Stagecoach (John Ford,United Artists, She Worea YellowRibbon (Ford,RKO, 1939), 1949), TheSearchers (Ford,Warners, 1956).Thereis a wealth ofmaterial on Ford,butfor see Joseph three ofthebestvolumes, McBride andMichael John Ford (New Wilmington,
Budd Boetticher,Sam Peckinpah: Studies of AuthorshipWithin the Western,Cinema One
CitadelPress, 1973);and Andrew The JohnFord Movie Mystery Sdr-ris, (Bloomington: IndianaUniv. Press, 1975). 31 Ride the High Country (Sam Peckinpah, MGM,1962), Ballad of Cable Hogue (Peckinpah, Warners, 1970),The Wild Bunch(Peckinpah, Warners, 1969).See Chapter 4, "Sam Peckinpah: The SavageEye" in Jim Kitses'keyvolume, Horizons West: Anthony Mann,
York: Da Capo Press, 1975); J.A. Place, The Western Films ofJohnFord (Secaucus, N.J.:
Series(Bloomington: Indiana Univ.Press,1969),139-73; andPaul Seydor, Peckinpah: The Western Films(Champaign: Univ. of IllinoisPress, 1979). 32 The Shootist (Don Siegel,Paramount, 1976). 33 McCabe and Mrs. Miller (Robert Altman, Warners, 1971), BuffaloBill and theIndians, orSitting Bull'sHistory Lesson(Altman, United Forthescreenplay, see Alan Artists, 1976).
Rudolphand RobertAltman, BuffaloBill and theIndians, or SittingBull's HistoryLesson,
suggested byArthur Kopit'sstageplay, Indians(New York:Bantam Books,1976). See also Robert Warshow, "Movie Chronicle: The Westerner," inTheImmediate Experience (New York:Atheneum, 1971),135-54;Andre Bazin,"The Western: or theAmerican Filmpar excellence" and"The Evolution oftheWestern" inWhat is Cinema? Vol. 2, trans. byHugh Gray (Berkeley: Univ.ofCalifornia Press,1971), 140-57; andRichard S. Slotkin, RegenerationThroughViolence: The Mythology of theAmericanFrontier(Middletown,Conn.: Wes-
leyanUniv. Press, 1973).
291
tivelyincorporatesthe developmentaland economic history of the genre withdiscussions of such legendaryfigures as Billy the Kid, Jesse James, and Gen. George Armstrong Custer.34 As well as animating familiar Americanmythology, Americanfilms also moregenerallyprovidea literature whichexplores (withvarying degrees of transparency)pervasive American preoccupations. American films have both covertlyand overtlyconfronted the tensions inherentin our concept of personal success and its paradoxical suspension of two contradictory impulses-one democratic,ethical,social, and work-oriented, the other elitist, pragmatic,individualistic,and reward-oriented. This paradox is covertlydramatizedand resolved in the gangster a genre film, whichflourished in the early 1930sand made iconic figures of Edward G. Robinson and JamesCagney, literally littlemen gutsyand smartenough to make theirway to thetop of an illegal,but corporate,structure. Robert Warshow has cogentlyobserved the gangster's rise and fall as a very Americantragedyof success, and the genre's thematicsignificance and visual iconography has attracteda good deal of fascinating scholarship.35 Personal success in Americanfilmhas also been treatedovertly-as, for instance,the major theme of directorMichael Ritchie (DownhillRacer, The Candidate, Smile, and The Bad News Bears), or in the unsettling look at a team of door-to-door cinema veritW Bible salesmen in documentaristsAlbert and David Maysles' Salesmen.36 Thus, like novels, short stories, plays, poems, and essays, filmsare a medium throughwhich stories are told and the moods and images of America given shape and specificarticulation.As a formof Americanliterature, filmsreflectin a deceptivelyeffortless and dreamimagery whichis part way the nightmare
34 See Calder'sThere Must Be a Lone Ranger and Cawelti'sThe Six-Gun Mystique, Wright's Six Guns and Society, and Kitses' Horizons West. See also Diana Serra Cary, The Hollywood Posse: The Story of a Gallant Band of Horsemen Who Made Movie History (Boston: Houghton Mifflin,1975); Philip French, Westerns:Aspects of a Movie Genre,
Cinema One Series(New York:Oxford Univ.Press,1977);Jon Tuska,TheFilming ofthe West(New York: Doubleday,1976).In addition, fora fineselection of essays on the Western, see JackNachbar, ed., Focus on theWestern (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.:PrenticeHall, 1974). 35 See Robert Warshow, "The Gangster as Tragic Hero," in TheImmediate Experience (New York: Atheneum, 1971),127-33;ColinMcArthur, Underworld USA, CinemaOne
Series (New York: Viking, 1972); Eugene Rosow, Born to Lose: The Gangster Film in
America (New York: Oxford Univ.Press. 1978);and JackShadoian, Dreamsand Dead

Ends: The American GangsterlCrimeFilm (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1977).
36 Downhill Racer(Michael Ritchie, Paramount, 1969), TheCandidate (Ritchie, Warners, 1972), Smile(Ritchie, United Artists, 1975), TheBad NewsBears(Ritchie, Paramount 1976); Salesmen(Albert and David Maysles,1969).For an excellent discussion of American cinema verit6 in general and of the Maysleses in particular, see Stephen
Mamber, Cinema Verite in America: Studies in UncontrolledDocumentary (Cambridge:
MIT Press,1974).
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American Quarterly
of our aesthetic and culturalheritage-a precious quality of the cinema appreciatedin Barbara Deming's RunningAway From Myself:A Dream Portraitof America Drawn fromthe Films of the 40's, 37and in all of the odd but often precisely appropriate somnambulent film criticism of ParkerTyler.38 on film and literature are abundant,the While scholarshipand criticism and critical same cannotbe said offilm and finearts. Except forhistorical and studies of the American avant-garde,experimental,underground, independent film (terms used both synonymouslyand to distinguish nuances of formal, structural, ideologicalemphases and means of produchas been paid to those impulses,techniques, tion),littlespecificattention whichthe motionpictureshares withpainting, coland effects sculpture, Film is lage, and architecture. Cited earlier,P. Adams Sitney's Visionary especiallyusefulin thiscontextas it draws parallelsbetweentheromantic and romanfilmmakers and structural concerns of Americanavant-garde tic American poetry and abstract expressionist American painting.39 However, outside of some briefdiscussion in works whichfocus on film of film as a fineart(as well consideration aesthetics,the onlybook-length as a literaryone) was originallypublished in 1915. In The Art of the Moving Picture, Vachel Lindsay speaks of filmas sculpture-in-motion, painting-in-motion, and architecture-in-motion, and makes specificcomparisonsbetween filmsand works of fineand plastic art.40 Otherwise,therelationship betweenfilm and othervisual and design arts has been largelyignored.It is telling,forinstance, thatwhile there has been some interestin the styles and use of design and architecture withinHollywood films,the scant literature thereis tends to emphasize the mechanicsof set designor its history, usually (although,happily,not always) isolatingthe art director fromvisual traditions and influencesin thecultureof whichhe is a part.It is finally leftto thereader,aided by the plentiful sketches and photographsprovided in a volume like Caligari's
37 Barbara Deming, RunningAway from Myself:A Dream Portraitof America Drawn fromthe Films of the 40's (New York: Grossman, 1969).
New York: Simon and Schuster, 1970); The ThreeFaces of the Film: The Art,the Dream, theCult (1960; rpt.South Brunswick,N.J.: A.S. Barnes, 1967); Sex, Psyche, Etcetera in the Film (New York: Horizon Press, 1969); and The Shadow of an Airplane Climbs the Empire State Building: A World Theoryof Film (New York: Doubleday, 1973).
39
38 See, in order TheHollywood Parker Tyler, Hallucination oftheir original publication: MagicandMyth oftheMovies(1947;rpt. (1944;rpt. NewYork:Simon andSchuster, 1970);
CriticalAnthology (New York: Dutton,1967)and Sitney,ed., The Essential Cinema: Essays on the Films in the Collection of Anthology Film Archives, 1 (New York: New York Univ.
A Battock, ed., TheNewAmerican Cinema: Sitney, Visionary Film.Alsosee Gregory
Press,1975). 40 TheArt Picture (1915;rpt. NewYork:Liveright, 1970). VachelLindsay, oftheMoving
293
Cabinet and Other Grand Illusions, to integrate filmdesign withart history.41 Architecture of the motionpicturepalace has fareda bitbetter,at least receiving overt treatment in Ben M. Hall's The Best Remaining Seats and Dennis Sharp's The Picture Palace.42 The challenge still remains: to relatethe visual worldof filmto canvas and architecture in the culture.Why not, as an innovativecolleague suggested,look at the composition of space in urban filmsin relationto major architectural styles fromLouis Sullivan to Louis Kahn, or at a filmlike On the Waterfront in relation to paintings from theAsh Can School or to theworkofBen Shahn and RobertRauschenberg?43 This is an area in whichAmericanStudies is well able to enrich Film Studies. FILM AND HISTORY As one Britishcriticappreciates, in orderto understandthe history of filmand the significance of film to history (as well as to nationalculture), ... we have to enquire how its discourses are produced and consumed, by whom, of socialrelations, howdo the whatplace do they have in thetotality worlds thesediscourses construct represent and interpret thematerial world; whatrelation do theybear to human bothas theexpression of that activity of it?44 and as an informant activity Americanfilmdoes not merelyhave a history-it also is history.Movies are a continuous inscription and interpretation of American experience through time and in the world. Films are traces of specific momentsin specificspaces mediatedby humanbeingswho are always culture-bound. No matter what theirform, all filmsare constituted through images (both visual and aural), and those images are, finally, only images chosen by is not as superfluous,unreliable,or people. The fictionfilm,therefore, as the casual observermight uninformative nor is the documentary think,
41 L&on Barsacq, Caligari's Cabinet and OtherGrandIllusions: A History ofFilm Design, trans.by Michael Bullock, ed. by ElliottStein (Boston: New York Graphic Society/Little, Brown, 1976). See also Mary Corliss and Carlos Clarens, "Designed for Film: The Hollywood Art Director," Film Comment, 14 (May-June 1978), 27-58. 42 Ben M. Hall, The Best RemainingSeats: Golden Age of the Movie Palace (New York: C.N. Potter, 1961); Dennis Sharp, The PicturePalace And OtherBuildingsfor the Movies (New York: F.A. Praeger, 1969). See also Elliott Stein, "An Acre of Seats in a Garden of Dreams," Film Comment, 15 (March-April 1979), 32-51. 43 On the Waterfront (Elia Kazan, Columbia, 1954). See Kenneth Hey, "Films and Regional Culture:Units forStudywithFilms and ThematicMaterial," a syllabusfiledwiththe National Faculty of the American Studies Association. 44 Richard Collins, "Revaluations," Screen Education, 22 (Spring 1977), 36.
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American Quarterly
as inherentlyhistorical or objective.45 All films, whether fiction or documentary, presentthemselvesto the historianfor dual service: they are both historicaldocumentsand interpretive histories.How theyare to be used depends not only upon the historian'sfamiliarity withfilmlanguage, but also upon certainmethodologicalchoices and underlying assumptionsabout the nature of filmand its history. It mightseem, forexample, an eminently reasonable recommendation thatthe readerbegin withone of the generalhistoricalsurveysof American filmsuch as Peter Cowie's Hollywood 1920-1970, Charles Higham's The Art of the American Film, Lewis Jacobs' excellent The Rise of the AmericanFilm and, to bringthingsup to date, Axel Madsen's The New Hollywood or JamesMonaco's AmericanFilm Now.46Despite the worth of the volumes themselves,thisrecommendation is based on some questionableassumptions.One is thatthe history of Americanfilm is primarily a historyof significant artistsand significant films. It would be just as relevantto the mediumand its developmentto directthe readerto industrial and technological histories such as Tino Balio's anthology, The AmericanFilm Industry, Michael Conant's extraordinary Antitrust in the Motion Picture Industry, and the special issues on economic and technologicalhistory recently offered by Cinema Journaland Journalof the University Film Association.47Or the emphasis could be shiftedto social history, as it is in Robert Sklar's Movie-Made America, Lawrence Alloway's Violent America: The Movies 1946-1964, or Arthur F. McClure's anthology,The Movies: An American Idiom.48 Anotherassumptionunderlying all these recommendations is just as important to
45 See, forexample, Charles J. Maland, American Visions: The Films of Chaplin, Ford, Capra, and Welles, 1936-1941, Dissertationson Film (New York: Arno Press, 1977) and RichardDyer MacCann, The People's Films: A Political Historyof U.S. Government Motion Pictures (New York: Hastings House, 1973) 46 Frank Cowie, Hollywood 1920-1970 (Cranbury, N.J.: A.S. Barnes, 1977); Charles Higham, The Artof the AmericanFilm (New York: Doubleday, 1973); Lewis Jacobs, The Rise of the American Film; A Critical History, withan Essay: ExperimentalCinema in America, 1921-1947 (New York: Teachers College Press, 1975); Axel Madsen, The New Hollywood: American Movies in the '70s (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1975); James Monaco, AmericanFilm Now: The People, The Power, The Mohey,The Movies (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1979). 47 Tino Balio, ed., The American Film Industry(Madison: Univ. of Wisconsin Press, 1976), Michael Conant, Antitrust in the Motion Picture Industry:Econo'mic and Legal Analysis (1960; rpt New York: Arno Press, 1978); "Economic and TechnologicalHistory," ed. by Douglas Gomeryand RobertC. Allen,Cinema Journal, 18 (Spring1979); Economic and Industry Historyof the AmericanFilm," ed. by JeanneThomas Allen, The Journalof the University Film Association, 31 (Spring 1979). 48 Sklar, Movie-Made America; Lawrence Alloway, ViolentAmerica: The Movies 19461964 (New York: Museum of Modern Artand New York GraphicSociety, 1971); Arthur F. McClure, The Movies: An AmericanIdiom, Readings in the Social Historyof theAmerican Motion Picture (Rutherford, N.J.: Fairleigh Dickenson Univ. Press, 1971).
295
consider (and possibly reject): thatthe studyof Americanfilmhistory is an isolationistenterprise, in no need of world filmhistoryto provide a contextwithin whichuniquelyAmericaneventscan be seen as unique and American. The problemof interpretation whichthecinemaposes to thehistorian is also considerable. What sort of documentis filmand what does it document? What distinctions,if any, need be maderbetween newsreels, documentaries,and featurenarrativefilmsas cinematicdocuments? Is one form of filmany less mediatedthananother?If,in additionto reading several of thehistories mentioned above, one specifically seeks out works like Erik Barnouw's Documentary:A Historyof the Non-Fiction Film, Richard Meram Barsam's anthology, Non-Fiction Film Theory and Criticism,and Lewis Jacobs' chronologically-arranged collection, The DocumentaryTradition, itquicklybecomes apparentthattheline dividing factual films and fictionfilms is sometimes barely visible.49One can legitimately question, forinstance,if it is any more historically usefulor instructive to understand American inWorldWarI orWorldWar involvement II through analyses of the history, production, and receptionof newsreels and documentariesor through analyses of featurefilmsmade duringand about those wars.50 Such issues are raised and answered in several works of crucialimportance forresearchand to the historian who would use film most them pedagogicalpurposes, recentamong the previouslymentioned anthology, theHollywood AmericanHistory/American Film: Interpreting Image. Althoughit focuses primarily on the documentary, The Historian and Film is a general "manifesto" recognizing filmas raw material,historical evidence, historicalfactor, and as a means of interpreting and teachinghistory. And "Flashback: Films and History" (an entirespecial issue of Cultures) containsa collectionof provocativetheoreticalessays on history whose and world cinema.5' In the lattervolume, one historian
49Erik Barnouw,Documentary:A Historyof the Non-FictionFilm (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1974); Richard Meram Barsam, Non-FictionFilm Theoryand Criticism(New York: Dutton,1976); Lewis Jacobs,The DocumentaryTradition, 2nd ed. (New York: W. W. Norton, 1979). 50 On newsreels and documentaries, see Thomas William Bohn, An Historical and Descriptive Analysis of the "Why We Fight" Series, Dissertationson Film (New York: Arno Press, 1977); Raymond Fielding, The American Newsreel 1911-1967 (Norman: Univ. of Oklahoma Press, 1978); Winifred Johnston, Memo on the Movies: War Propaganda 19141939 (Norman: CooperativeBooks, 1939); and RichardMaynard,ed., Propaganda on Film: A Nation at War (Rochelle Park, N.J.: Hayden Books, 1975). On war in featurefilms,see Tom Perlmutter, War Movies (New York: Castle Books, 1974); Russell Earl Shain, An Analysisof MotionPicturesAbout WarReleased bytheAmericanFilm Industry, 1939-1970 (New York: Arno Press, 1976); and Suid, Guts and Glory. 51 AmericanHistory/American Film. Paul Smith,ed., The Historianand Film (New York: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1976); "Flashback: Films and History," Cultures, 2 (1974).
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American Quarterly
aim is to develop a theoryof the filmdocumentaddresses a major issue when he states: thatthereis a assumption . . we mustabandonthe naive and dangerous adaptedto thepreciseand which is simply document 'uniquegenre"of film ofhistoriofscientists, teachers, poetsandauthors requirements contradictory It is an is nota fabulous unicorn. document cal accounts. Thecinematographic the in itsownway,each having and useful ofgenres, each one different array andpresentation ofselection to follow itsownprinciples ifnottheduty, right, of historical material.52 and featurefilms, of documentary Given the equal historicalsignificance period or area scholars are able to approach a particular interdisciplinary and the withall of cinema (the films of Americanpoliticalor social history literature)at their disposal. in the United Consider,forexample, thepoliticaland economic turmoil States in the early 1930s, fromthe end of the Hoover administration and written term.Along withall the traditional Roosevelt's first through film like Gabriel visual materialusuallyconsultedon theperiod,a feature document.For and telling Over the WhiteHouse can also be a legitimate one thing,William Randolph Hearst, who was most responsiblefor its politicsand the course of America in those years. production,influenced For another,the filmwas takenseriouslyby the public despite its bizarre through promises of political paplot. In this film,a playboy-bachelor, tronage,is elected Presidentof the United States. Oblivious or simply until aroundhim,he plays in office of theeconomic misery contemptuous he is fatallyinjuredin an automobileaccident of his own making.Howrevivedby an unseen angel Gabriel to become a ever, he is miraculously benevolentand absolute dictator-tactically a Hitler,but in the hearta combinationof Teddy Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln. Before his borrowed time is up, he solves America's problemsby declaringa national emergency,adjourningCongress, and settingup a ruthlesspolice force public whichgunsdown uncooperativemobsters.He createsjobs through achieves worksprograms (thistwo years priorto the W.P.A.), and finally world peace by demandingthat foreignwar debts be recalled and that or face obliteration. Althoughset in the otherpowers disarmvoluntarily a wealth of materialabout the historian future,1941,the 1933filmoffers And Gabriel is as relevantto a studyof the 1930sas Pare its own period.53
52 ZbigniewCzeczot-Gawrak,"Notes on a GeneralTheoryof theFilm Document," trans. by M.F. M&traux,Cultures, 2 (1974), 246. 53 Gabriel Over the White House (GregoryLaCava, MGM, 1933). For more on the film, see Robert L. McConnell, "The Genesis and Ideology of Gabriel Over the WhiteHouse," Cinema Journal,15(Spring1976),7-26; and AndrewBergman,We're in theMoney, 110-20.
297
Lorentz's The Plow That Broke the Plains (1936), photographs by Walker Evans and Dorothea Lange, or James Agee's Let Us Now Praise Famous Men. Screeningperiod filmscan be a heuristic enterprise thatstretches farbeyondthe illustrative service whichfilmshave usually provided the historian.The scholarly literature, both in directionand scope, offers a guide to the selectionof particular filmsor kinds of films thehistorian might look at. There are, forexample,thediffering emphases of Paul W. Facey's The Legion of Decency (which began its period of influencein 1933), and Jeffrey Morton Paine's The Simplificationof American Life- Hollywood Films of the 1930s. And there are primary documentssuch as the Payne Fund Studies, which in 1933 publishedthe resultsof behavioral research into the influenceof movies on American children, as well as its detailedand negativecritiqueby Mortimer J. Adler in Art and Prudence: A Study in Practical Philosophy.54 This briefelaborationof the possibilitieswhich filmsand filmscholarship offer the social and politicalhistorian is meantto be suggestive.One could approach a thematicstudyof censorshipin the United States in a similarway, lookingperhaps at Ira H. Carmen's Movies, Censorshipand theLaw and RichardS. Randall's Censorshipof theMovies, and at representative films ranging from a sophisticated silent work like von Stroheim'sFoolish Wives and the pre-Production Code Red Dust (with Jean Harlow and Clark Gable) to the present.55 Or one could approach a specific subject like the House Un-American Activities Committee film.There is a greatdeal of materialavailable, but particularly through interesting are Alvah Bessie's Inquisitionin Eden, a "scripted" explorationof HUAC from1943-1951,and JohnCogley's Reporton Blacklisting, a chronologicalpresentation of the 1947 hearings,labor strikes,and the 1951 hearings,with an appendix which considers the content of films made by the "Unfriendly Ten." Gordon Kahn's Hollywood on Trial is a contemporaneousaccount of the hearings,and ThoughtControl in the U.S.A. is a fascinating compilationof transcripts froma Hollywood conferenceheld in July of 1947-three months priorto the official startof the
54 Paul W. Fucey, The Legion of Decency: A Sociological Analysisof theEmergenceand Developmentof a Social Pressure Group, Dissertationson Film (New York: Arno Press, 1974); Jeffrey MortonPaine, The Simplification of American Life: Hollywood Films of the 1930's (New York: Arno Press, 1977); MortimerAdler, Art and Prudence: A Study in Practical Philosophy(1937; rpt.New York: ArnoPress, 1978). Also separate volumesofthe Paine Fund Series have been reprinted by Arno Press; fortitles,writeArno Press, 3 Park Avenue, New York, New York 10016. 55 Ira H. Carmen,Movies, Censorshipand theLaw (Ann Arbor:Univ. of MichiganPress, 1967); Richard S. Randall, Censorshipof the Movies: The Social and Political Controlof a Mass Medium (Madison: Univ. of Wisconsin Press, 1968); Foolish Wives (Erich von Stroheim,Universal, 1921); Red Dust (Victor Fleming, MGM, 1932).
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American Quarterly
hearings-to discuss the possibilityof an "unwarrantedintrusion"into creativeprocesses. Relevant filmswould include not only the industry's involvedin the proceedings,but also filmswhich workby artistsdirectly on the hearings and on thebehaviorof those can be read as a commentary who supportedor repudiatedHUAC.56 is already recconnectionbetweenfilmand social history The integral in groups withinAmericansociinterested ognized by those particularly politicallyand economically. Film's immensepopularity, ety who suffer its subtlepowers of persuasion,its abilityto perpetuateand altercultural stereotypes,its graphic historical evidence of social attitudes-all of these factorshave been the object of examinationby scholars lookingat the experiences of black Americans, American women, and Native to researchon the particiAmericans.Thomas Cripps' key contributions and alternaof both mainstream pation of black Americansin the history tive American cinema (Slow Fade to Black and Black Film as Genre) have been previouslycited. The readeris also directedto Donald Bogle's Toms, Coons, Mulattoes, Mammies and Bucks . . ., Daniel J. Leab's From Sambo to Superspade: The Black Experience in Motion Pictures, Black Films and anthology, Lindsay Patterson's singularand fascinating Film-Makers, and Henry T. Sampson's highlyuseful source book on and artisans,Blacks in Black and performers, black films,filmmakers, White.57 The literaturein Women's Studies is comparably rich, although its focus generallytends to emphasize on-screenimages of women, oftenat presence in the production the expense of consideringtheiroff-screen historyof American cinema. Molly Haskell's From Reverence to Rape and Marjorie Rosen's Popcorn Venus trace the history of female stereotypesin American movies, while Karen Kay and Gerald Peary's criticalanthology,Women and the Cinema, provides a complementary and as well as women performers rangeof essays on women filmmakers focused,BrandonFrench's On the their on-screenimages. More narrowly
56 Alvah Bessie, Inquisitionin Eden (New York: Macmillan, 1965); JohnCogley, Report on Blacklisting(1956; rpt.New York: Arno Press, 1976); Gordon Kahn, Hollywoodon Trial: The Storyof the Ten Who Were Indicted (1948; rpt. New York: Arno Press, 1976); Kahn, which ThoughtControlin the U.S.A. (1947; rpt.New York: GarlandPress, 1976). For films on the hearings,see, for example, Force of Evil (AbraittmPolonsky, commentindirectly Warners, 1948) and High Noon (Fred Zinnemann,United Artists, 1952). 57 Cripps, Slow Fade to Black and Black Film as Genre; Donald Bogle, Toms, Coons, Mulattoes, Mammies and Bucks . . . (New York: Viking, 1973); From Sambo to 1976); Superspade: The Black Experience in Motion Pictures (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, from Anthology Lindsay Patterson,ed., Black Films and Film-Makers:A Comprehensive Stereotypeto Superhero (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1975); Henry T. Sampson, Blacks in Black and White:A Source Book on Black Films (Metuchen,N.J.: Scarecrow Press, 1977).
299
an exploration Verge ofRevoltpresents ofthechanging screen images of dissatisfied women during the1950s, andE. AnnKaplan'sWomen inFilm Noirrigorously deconstructs theimage ofwoman as itappearsina group of filmsidentified withthe post-war 1940sand early 1950s.Although idiosyncratically arranged,RosemaryRibich Kowalski's annotated literature on women inthecinema as performers, filmmakers, critics, and as well as on imagesof womenin film.58 scholars, Unfortunately, book-length studies oftheNativeAmerican andfilm are an interesting Hollywood Gospeloffers multi-media to thedual approach oftheAmerican stereotypes Indian as noblesavageandvicious primitive. M. Batailleand CharlesL.P. Silet'sThePretend Gretchen Indians:Images of the Native Americansin the Movies bringstogether theiralready stillrare. Ralph Friarand Natasha Friar's The OnlyGood Indian . .. The Womenand Film: A Bibliography is also recommended forits citationsof
considerable research on thesubject, someofwhich has appeared infilm ofJonTuska's TheFilming periodicals. Large portions of theWestand Philip French'sWesterns (bothpreviously cited)are also extremely useful.59 vision However, themostcritical material on Hollywood's limited of distinct of NativeAmericans, its homogenization and bastardization itsmanipulation ofstereotypical cultures, images(however sympathetic) to suitAnglo of needs,is tobe found inperiodicals which arenotthefocus thepresent essay.Interested readers theSyllabus Bankof should contact FilmInstitute's theAmerican National andrequest Educational Services in Popular the impressive "Course File: Images of Native Americans Film" prepared by JackNachbarand MichaelT. Marsden; thefilecontains not only a wide-ranging but also a selectionof bibliography films thatspanbothtimeand stereotypes.60 and feature documentary
58 Molly Haskell, From Reverence to Rape: The Treatment of Womenin theMovies (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1974); Marjorie Rosen, Popcorn Venus: Women, Movies, and theAmericanDream (New York: Avon, 1973); Karen Kay and Gerald Peary, Women and the Cinema: A CriticalAnthology(New York: E.P. Dutton, 1977); Brandon French,On the Verge of Revolt: Womenin the AmericanFilms of the Fifties(New York: Ungar, 1978); E. Ann Kaplan, Womenin Film Noir (London: BritishFilm Institute,1978). Film noir is also characterizedby its dark visual styleand tawdrysituations and characters; RosemaryRibich Kowalski, Womanand Film: A Bibliography (Metuchen,N.J.: Scarecrow Press, 1976). 59 Ralph and Natasha Friar,The OnlyGood Indian ... The Hollywood Gospel (New York: Drama Book Specialists, 1972); GretchenM. Bataille and Charles L.P. Silet, The Pretend Indians: Images of the Native Americans in the Movies (Ames: Iowa State Univ. Press, 1980); Tuska, The Filmingof the West and French, Westerns.See also Charles L.P. Silet and GretchenM. Bataille, "The Indian in the Film: A CriticalSurvey," Quarterly Review of Film Studies, 2 (February 1977), 56-74. 60 Writeto Syllabus Bank, National Education Services, American Film Institute, Kennedy Center, Washington,D.C. 20566. Information on other areas of interest can also be requested.
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At thispoint, I hopeitis obviousthat thewaysin which FilmStudies withAmerican can profitably interact Studiesare so plentiful as to provokebothexcitement and caution inthescholar whowoulddojusticeto thedemands ofboth.One must digest therelevant literature oftwofields. One must learn a newlanguage, a newwayofseeing andreading, inorder to raise the film textbeyondits usual statusas a visual aid. And one a pleasure shouldsee a great many films, as wellas a charge. These are thechallenges which facetheAmerican Studiesscholar and which must be met.The cinemadoesn't just illustrate buthas been and is American and institution It art,history, politics, culture, from 1895to thepresent. to say thatwithout does not seem too strong the inclusionof film, American Studiesis notstudying America.61
61 A selection of helpfulreferenceworks are Linda Batty,RetrospectiveIndex to Film Periodicals 1930-1971 (New York: R.R. Bowker, 1975); Educational Film Locator of the Consortiumof University Film Centers and R.R. Bowker Company (New York: R.R. Bowker, 1978); JohnC. Gerlachand Lana Gerlach,The CriticalIndex (New York: Teachers College Press, 1974); RichardDyer MacCann and Edward S. Perry,The New Film Index: A Bibliography of Magazine Articlesin English, 1930-1970 (New York: E.P. "Dutton,1975); Frank Manchel, Film Study: A Resource Guide (Rutherford, N.J.: Fairleign Dickinson Press, 1973); Linda Harris Mehr, Motion Pictures. Television and Radio: A Union Catalogue of Manuscript and Special Collections in the WesternUnited States (Boston: G. K. Hall, 1977);Kemp R. Niverand Bebe Bergsten, eds., MotionPicturesFromtheLibrary of Congress Paper PrintCollection 1894-1912 (Berkeley: Univ. of CaliforniaPress, 1967); Olga S. Weber, NorthAmerican Film and Video Directory:A Guide to Media Collections and Services, rev. ed. (New York: R.R. Bowker, 1976); and Christopher Wheaton,Primary Cinema Resources (Boston: G.K. Hall, 1975).

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Beyond Visual Aids: American Film as American Culture Author(s): Vivian C. Sobchack Source: American Quarterly, Vol.

BEYOND VISUAL AIDS: AMERICAN FILM AS AMERICAN CULTURE

Film as American Culture

the Hollywood Image, brings Film: Interpreting can History/American

Film as American Culture

American Quarterly FILM LANGUAGE AND FILM THEORY

Film as American Culture

presentsthe and critically chronologically Film Theories:An Introduction

Readings provides many selections from and Criticism: Introductory

Film as American Culture

McTeague), von Sternberg's An AmericanTragedyand George Steven's

Charge of the Light Brigade (TonyRichardson, UnitedArtists, 1968).

Film as American Culture

Budd Boetticher,Sam Peckinpah: Studies of AuthorshipWithin the Western,Cinema One

leyanUniv. Press, 1973).

Film as American Culture

America (New York: Oxford Univ.Press. 1978);and JackShadoian, Dreamsand Dead

Mamber, Cinema Verite in America: Studies in UncontrolledDocumentary (Cambridge:

A Battock, ed., TheNewAmerican Cinema: Sitney, Visionary Film.Alsosee Gregory

Press,1975). 40 TheArt Picture (1915;rpt. NewYork:Liveright, 1970). VachelLindsay, oftheMoving

Film as American Culture

Film as American Culture

Film as American Culture

Film as American Culture

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